I am so sick of discussing abortion, but this seems worth mentioning:
In her first out-of-state political appearance since last fall’s presidential election, former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin confided to 3,000 at a right-to-life event here that she had “just for a fleeting moment” contemplated seeking an abortion after learning she was pregnant with her son Trig, who will turn 1 on Saturday.
There is a name for when women who are pregnant are allowed to determine whether or not they keep their baby or have an abortion. It is called pro-choice.
chuck
BREAKING: Conservatives Display Hypocrisy.
They’re all about choice, as long as you only get one.
El Cid
No, this is wrong. Conservatives who believe that the individual is the true actor in a democracy and are against government oppression of the individual know that the government must be given the authority to stop an individual from having a legal medical procedure performed. It all works out somehow, but denying women the ability to choose to undergo this legal medical procedure on their own bodies is clearly a defense of the individual against over-reaching government authority.
Violet
Wow. Just when I think Sarah Palin can’t disgust me any more. Her hypocrisy is jaw-dropping. As well as her ignorance about what "choice" really means. Lookee there. Sarah made a choice. Typical that she doesn’t want anyone else to have the same option.
Krista
And yet she would fight to her last breath to deny that choice to other women. I very rarely use the "c"-word to refer to another woman, but reading about stuff like this (or about abortion protesters who actually go and get abortions on the sly) brings me closer to that type of profanity than anything else.
DougJ
There’s an old saying that minor surgery means they’re going to operate on someone other than you.
By the same token, abortion is murder when someone else’s teen-aged daughter gets pregnant.
Legalize
Sooo … Palin’s done right? She’s pro-choice. She can’t be the subject of GOPer idol worship and be pro-choice at the same time.
Brachiator
It’s interesting that Palin’s speech comes closely after reports that she was no longer considered to be among the top tier of GOP stars. So perhaps she is fighting back by a blatant appeal to the fundamentalist base which not only loves her, but which does not demand anything other than a rigid adherence to a belief in "the culture of life."
By the way, I’m not doubting the sincerity of her beliefs. She’s just going with what she knows which, unfortunately, ain’t much.
ChrisNBama
I really don’t think Sarah understood what her admission meant. If she did, she certainly wouldn’t have said it.
PurpleGirl
Hmmmm… if that’s true then maybe the reason she didn’t want to have Trig in Texas was that she thought if she took the time to go home to Alaska something would happen and she’d lose him. There are many words for that but I’ll be civil and just say opportunist and conclude that she lost her bet and will now have to raise Trig. Poor kid, he deserves a nicer, more truly moral and loving mother.
Paulie Chestnuts
How did the opposite of ‘pro-choice’ become ‘pro-life’, as opposed to the more semantically correct ‘anti-choice’?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
No, it’s called "possessed by demons."
If Palin were President, America would be a holy land, where such unfortunate women were tied to rocks and beaten over the heads with sticks while exorcists chanted over them, until the demons left them.
That is as it should be.
Palin-Huckabee in ’12!
cleek
semantics and logic are for ivory-tower elitists.
joes527
@Legalize:
Without a question.
She is currently flaming out in Alaska. Anyone too crazy for Alaska is officially done.
I saw a video of a press conference she gave the other day and she looked exhausted. She was barely even trying to answer the questions, and seemed just fed up herself with the whole celebrity thing.
She seems to be coming to terms with the fact that she was completely out of her league on the national stage, and even at the state level when people are watching.
Look for no one to mention her in 2012, and if someone is fool enough to do it, look for her to not run.
sgwhiteinfla
Who wants to take bets that it was more than for "just a fleeting moment"?
That she would say something so self serving is disgusting and I just don’t see how any rational person could support such an egomaniacal, habitually lying, tyrant. Of course its the classic case of a fringe person speaking to fringe people so I shouldn’t be all that surprised at their support.
smiley
@joes527:
Not so sure about that. One of the signs seen at the tea tantrums was, "Don’t blame me, I voted for Sarah." There’s still the cult of Sarah — for now.
JK
Listening to Palin since Jan 20th, it appears as if she’s convinced herself that she has the 2012 Republican nomination locked up.
That had to sting when McCain didn’t even mention her name during his recent appearance on the Tonight Show.
I can’t wait to see her reaction when Republicans choose someone else at the 2012 convention.
Evil Bender
This is the second time Palin’s camp has made this sort of admission: her people were quick to clarify that Bristol made her own decision to keep her child.
It’s clearly hypocrisy, but I think it’s more than that: anti-choicers know that they look terrible when it’s pointed out they’re for forced child birth, so they have to assure everyone that they’ve made their own choice while systematically opposing those choices for other women.
This is what happens when you’re signature position is both a huge affront to liberty and hugely political unpopular.
Krista
Old debating tactic: try to define the terms. If you can do that, you’re halfway to winning the argument. So, we have some on the pro-choice side who call pro-lifers "anti-choice". And we have many pro-lifers who call pro-choice people "pro-abortion".
Unfortunately, the latter side tends to be a bit better at message consistency, it seems. But as far as actual accuracy goes, we’re a bit more accurate. Most on the pro-choice side are not running around saying "Yay for abortion!" They just don’t want that choice taken away from them. And as far as the anti-choice crowd are concerned, they seem to feel that we women already HAVE plenty of choices: keep the baby, give it up for adoption, or keep our legs closed.
Their viewpoint is simplistic and gives no allowance to how very complicated some situations can be, but I really think that this is how a lot of people look at it. They see things only in terms of this abstract baby and not at all in terms of the very real woman actually carrying it.
My own mother is pro-life, and doesn’t even think exceptions should be made in the case of rape. Her viewpoint is "it’s not the baby’s fault". But most pro-lifers think that way — in terms of the abstract and the general. They don’t stop and think about how they would feel if this was happening to THEM, or to THEIR daughter. (Thus the hypocrisy when you have pro-lifers getting abortions for themselves or their daughters — not so worried about "the baby" now, are they?)
Whereas I think that we pro-choicers are a little bit more empathetic, and can very easily put ourselves into the shoes of a woman who is being forced against her will to carry a child. I’m pregnant right now, and it still hasn’t changed my pro-choice leanings. In fact, it’s strengthened them. Your body really does get taken over when you’re pregnant. And to imagine undergoing this same physical ordeal when the pregnancy is unwanted, or worse, the result of rape? I would not wish that upon any woman, ever.
Tattoosydney
@Legalize:
Of course she’s not done … The wingnut mind will immediately rationalise this as "She thought about doing the wrong thing, but then she didn’t", not "She exercised her choice".
It’s the same mindset that holds that if you say you choose not to sleep with men, despite your biological urge to do so, then you’re straight, even if you hang around airport bathrooms or pay undercover cops for blow jobs or buy crystal meth from male prostitutes.
aimai
I don’t think you guys grasp how this is supposed to play on the far right. Its simply goes into the bin of "we all are sinners" in which the greater the sin the greater the redemption. Sometimes people get up and talk and brag about how close they are to god and how that makes all things easy (no choice necessary because I choose to do what jesus wants!) and sometimes people get up and brag about how far they’ve come and how degraded they were (lookit me! Jesus saved me from being a drug dealing hypocrite just like you! as people often say to close family members who know for a fact that this is completely false). Its just two sides of a standard christianist trope. Its not an "admission" of any kind. Its part of a standard Passion Play.
aimai
Jen R
So, if anyone ever for a fleeting second thinks of doing something that harms another human being (which, you’ll recall, is the pro-life belief about abortion), that means they should want it to be legal?
Legalize
I’m quite certain there was a lenghty discussion and her political future was inextricably linked to the outcome of her decision. Everything we’ve seen from her is self-serving, rancid and hypocritical to the extreme. I just find it repulsive that she informed a room full of cunts just like her that she considered aborting the poor kid – not that the decision isn’t weighty, but that she seems to see only a political upside in informing the world. She is simply a bad, ignorant person who sees value only in what benefits her ambitions. There is little else to her character. Much like George W. Bush.
Legalize
No. It means that Palin’s convictions about the world stop the instant they hit her in the nose. Unsuprisingly.
jake 4 that 1
The TalEvan is all for choice. So much so that they want to make sure every woman makes the right one.
What aimai says. Also.
JasonF
We saw a fair amount of this during the campaign, when it was announced that Bristol Palin was pregnant and that she had decided to keep the baby. This was described by the Palin campaign as a decision, not a foregone conclusion, although they quickly tried to backpedal and explain that they meant that Bristol had decided to rear the baby herself rather than place it for adoption.
I see some similarity between the way social conservatives talk about abortion and the way they talk about homosexuality. With both, there is a strong subtext in the rhetoric that there is an ovewhelming temptation to the issue, one that social conservatives would be unable to resist without the help of the law. "If gay marriage is legal," the argument seems to be, "millions of formerly heterosexual Americans will abandon their opposite-sex attraction in favor of homosexuality." Likewise, there’s almost a sense that pregnant social conservatives have a daily struggle to avoid driving down to Planned Parenthood and terminating their pregnancies.
Maybe the problem will solve itself when gay marriage is legalized — social conservatives, no longer constrained by the law, will give in to their hidden desires and enter same-sex marriages. Then, relieved of the possibility of pregnancy, they will no longer care about the lurking temptation of abortion.
Evil Bender
So, if anyone ever for a fleeting second thinks of doing something that harms another human being (which, you’ll recall, is the pro-life belief about abortion), that means they should want it to be legal?
Comprehension FAIL.
If anyone exercises for themselves a right that they would deny to others, they are hypocrites. This isn’t a difficult concept.
jake 4 that 1
Yes, those whackjobs that plant bombs, shoot doctors and assault people going into family planning clinics are really concerned about harming human beings.
Yawn.
tomjones
Pro-choice for me but not for thee.
Jen R
If anyone exercises for themselves a right that they would deny to others, they are hypocrites.
Sarah Palin had an abortion?
** Atanarjuat **
@JK:
Governor Sarah Palin will simply rally her PUMA-esque supporters with the battle cry of, "remember Hillary!!!" The teabagging RNC will bow to this superior force and victory will be assured.
It’s my hope that Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild and Harriet Christian will bravely lead the fight to expose Barack the Inadequate Teleprompter. Also.
-A
Cris
Dude, you posted that under your spoof account again.
Cris
Sarah Palin had a choice.
Shinobi
If you enjoy blatant hypocrisy this video never gets old.
I’m not old enough to remember what it was like before abortion was legal, but I’m sure the "decision" making process was a little different. "Should I risk my life going to see a back alley abortionist or marry this guy don’t love so people can percieve me as respectable and spend the next 18 years resenting this child for taking my life away?" Fun fun options!
Cat Lady
Reihan Salam is off the Palin bandwagon. My favorite part is where he asks if Palin has had a secret lobotomy.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-16/a-palin-supporters-regrets/
Evil Bender
Sarah Palin had an abortion?
Sigh.
She made a choice about whether or not to have an abortion. But she would rather other women be forced to give birth.
Choices for her, but not for others. Hypocrisy.
kay
@Krista:
They see things only in terms of this abstract baby and not at all in terms of the very real woman actually carrying it.
That’s the part I don’t get. Plenty of people are abstract about "babies" or "children" ( "blah, blah, blah, we love children, they are our FUTURE, we all love babies" ) but pro-lifers should be the last to fall for that. They’re so single issue, babies are their whole deal.
I would think they would be the most practical and responsive and nitty gritty problem-solving re: real women and babies, but often they’re not. They never want the details. That messes up the story.
They’re Hallmark-card sappy and unhelpful and useless baby-lovers, as far as I’m concerned. Less weeping, more help, please.
Jen R
Evil Bender, it’s not that I don’t understand your argument, it’s that I think it’s stupid.
Every day, people are tempted to do things that harm others, and decide not to. It doesn’t logically follow that people should believe that everything they’ve ever been tempted to do should be allowed.
AL
Fixed to accurately describe Palin’s position vis-a-vis her pro-life stance.
The GOP’s "pro-life" position is a myth, plain and simple.
kay
@Jen R:
I actually agree with you. I think Palin can fleetingly consider an abortion and still think it’s killing babies.
I’m not crazy about the way she flogs her kids for political gain, and I wouldn’t do it, but it’s her business.
I think she’s going to really regret doing it. It’s horrible.
Mike in NC
Panderin’ Palin strikes again. Those two will first have to contend with Newt Gingrich, who will choose his ego as his running mate.
Legalize
That Reihan Salam article is full of so much fail:
1. Levi killed off Palin where Barack could not? Are you kidding? Scoreboard, motherfucker.
2. Since returning to Alaska, one can’t help but get the impression that Palin is a clownish, vindictive amateur? No shit, inspector. We knew this from the first instant she opened her mouth on the national stage. That you only now figured it out is precisely the point. Fail fail fail.
Jen R
kay, I agree, Palin really should STFU about her kids already. I think it’s especially creepy when she speaks for Bristol about how pro-abstinence Bristol is, etc. Or when she feuds with the 18-year-old father of her grandson in public.
Evil Bender
Every day, people are tempted to do things that harm others, and decide not to. It doesn’t logically follow that people should believe that everything they’ve ever been tempted to do should be allowed.
If you’ll refer to my original comment,you’ll note that Palin has done considerably more than "briefly consider" abortions. She made a point of highlighting her daughter’s choice, and now highlighting her own. She’s left no doubt that she considers it okay for her family to make reproductive choices, but not for others to do the same.
Yes, anti-choicers can make the case that they regret their own abortions or have changed their positions or whatever. They can say "I chose/did not choose to give birth, and don’t think you should have the choice." But when they use the rhetoric of choice to justify taking away choice, they’re f’ing hypocrites, and I’m going to call them on it.
Punchy
I tried to abort Trig, too, in high school. Managed to finish it and moved on to Calculus.
** Atanarjuat **
@Cris:
No, Cris, this is really me.
-A
RememberNovember
Then she thought of how she could use her son for political gain.
Cris
I actually think Jen R is right: Palin doesn’t believe the choice should be legal, she’s just congratulating herself for not doing something she considers immoral.
It would be like saying "just for a fleeting moment I considered murdering my boss" and expecting accolades for your restraint. You’re not saying murder should be legal, you’re saying you are an awesome not-murderer.
So the real upshot for me is, Palin sets as low a bar for herself as the RNC did.
Jamey
18:
I’m pro-life. As fucking pro-life as they come: I oppose wars in all but the most dire, national defense situations; I oppose capital punishment; and, in general, support human decency and dignity, which, these days means I don’t get wood at the thought of torturing brown people. And, yes, I’m even against abortion: I have, to date, two children and zero abortions; I can only imagine the pain one must go through to even consider terminating a pregnancy. But, unlike war and law-and-order issues, which are spelled out pretty clearly, what to do about one’s own medical condition–in this case, pregnancy–is a deeply private matter. So I support the rights of individuals to choose as their conscience dictates. And thank GOD the laws and courts agree with me.
Thus, it’s not by any means a stretch to be both pro-life and pro-choice. To present pro-choice as the opposite of pro-life is a false construct. Conversely, to claim to be pro-life and pro-capital punishment is, IMO, hypocrisy. No grey areas there. Supporting life and supporting liberty are not mutually exclusive.
Krista
Anything that contradicts their black-and-white mentality is unwanted. I really think that certain social positions require a definite amount of intellectual dishonesty and willful blindness to facts. Many of these people, when confronted with real-life, complicated information that conflicts with their worldview, will either ignore the information or discredit its source.
Try talking to them about women who get abortions due to the fetus having an abnormality that is incompatible with life. They will insist that those cases are few and far between, and much more rare than those women who get abortions just for shits and giggles. With a wave of the hand, they dismiss the hundreds of women who have a fetus with anencephaly (don’t look at the Wiki page for it — they have pictures, and I’m going to have nightmares tonight.) Life is ugly, and messy, and complicated sometimes, and people have to make difficult decisions. And to my mind, presuming to know what another adult should decide, in a major situation, is arrogant in the extreme.
GSD
Sweet Jesus, the political degeneration of the GOP and the rightwing continues apace.
They are now the party of choice for their own kind, pro-child abuse, pro-torture, anti-worker and anti-union and pro-plutocrat, pro-domestic terrorism and dismantling of the union, pro-racism, anti-gay, immigrant, minimum wage and science.
What’s not to love about these compassionate people?
-GSD
YellowJournalism
I’m in the middle of my second pregnancy, and I too cannot imagine what it would be like to carry a pregnancy that was unwanted or forced upon me. There’s so much physical and emotional stress involved in pregnancy and post-pregnancy. I think that a lot of people do not truly understand what a change it is on a woman’s body to have a baby, or a lot of women on the pro-life side have forgotten and overlook how much it changed their body chemistry/physical make-up. And even in a healthy pregnancy, there are still risks to the woman’s life. Complications can come up out of nowhere, even after giving birth.
Do these people think that the woman gives birth and magically she goes back to being the same person emotionally and physically that she was before?
And how is it possible that Sarah Palin’s admission makes her more and less sympathetic in my eyes?
Face
Uh, what?
Mnemosyne
@Jen R:
Actually, the problem with a lot of right-wingers/conservatives is that they seem to genuinely believe that if something is legal, it’s automatically moral in all circumstances. That’s how they can do things like sell and re-sell a mortgage for 10 times its value even if it means ruining the country’s economy — hey, it was perfectly legal to do it, so the consequences don’t matter. As long as it was legal, it doesn’t matter what harm it does.
Abortion is a difficult question without a simple answer. The right answer for one woman is the wrong answer for another. But conservatives/right-wingers can’t handle that kind of ambiguity, so they’d rather have it all be illegal than have to think about what to do if their nine-year-old daughter was raped and impregnated. Just make it all illegal and they don’t have to think about icky moral questions like that.
Farley
@Punchy: Blue Ribbon for you sir/ma’am!!
Shinobi
I’m just picking on this quote in particular because it was easy. But I think it is problematic to equate considering abortion with considering illegal acts. Largely because there are so many questions and moral ambiguities with regards to abortion that depend on the individual in question’s beliefs. Also because having a child has very personal consequences for the mother and less consequences for others. (Depending, of course, on how you as an individual define personhood). Not only will she have a parasite in her body dependant on her for the next 9 months she will also have a responsiblity to that child for at elast 18 years.
(Re: Adoption People who talk about adoption should be aware that women who give up their children for adoption often have depression and PTSD like symptoms, and there is little to no support available to them after they have given the baby up. This is often glossed over by pro life groups.)
So anyway, yes, Sarah Palin did not effectively have an abortion because she considered one. She excersized her right to breifly consider what is currently a safe and legal procedure.
If abortion is ever outlawed again that choice will still exsist, but it will be back alley, under the table dangerous procedures that put you on the wrong end of the law and possibly in the ER or worse. Abortions still happend when abortion was illegal, the choice here is not between " no abortion" and "abortion" the choice is between "safe abortion" and "scary illegal unsafe abortion."
The best way to stop abortions is to promote birth control, and that doesn’t seem like something that Sarah Palin or anyone on the right are interested in doing. So what is their real agenda?
Peter J
All those things Palin did after her water broke, that she really shouldn’t have done, was that her contemplating a late term abortion?
slag
@Shinobi: What you said.
kay
@Jen R:
It’s going to come back and bite her, using those kids. They’re going to resent it.
She’s reckless, though, and personal life can be informative, when looking at a Prez.
She engaged in a two year family court battle regarding her sister’s marriage. Just think about that. Neither she nor Todd Palin were named in that action. They were both so far into that custody battle that the family court judge had to smack Sarah and Todd, who were NOT getting divorced, the child in question was not their child, and the Palin’s were not in the courtroom.
The judge knew who the third-party driver was behind that custody dispute was: Sarah Palin.
Imagine that as President. Oh, my.
TenguPhule
Tax cuts, Guns and Beer solve everything.
Zach
I think it was longer than a fleeting moment, and I think that it’s quite likely that the reason her pregnancy was kept hidden (does it make any sense that she wouldn’t exploit her pregnancy for political gain?) was to keep the option on the table after discovering Trig’s condition. If she was on the fence about even having a child (first stat I found is that ~20% of pregnancies are aborted in the States), there’s no way it didn’t seriously come to mind when the Downs test came back positive (>90% of Downs pregnancies are aborted). I was always hesitant to speculate on this stuff up until this point, but she’s lost whatever respect was left after employing the apparatus of her state for public family feuds. It makes a lot more sense than whatever Andrew Sullivan suspects.
Phoebe
If abortion were illegal, she NEVER would have said that. She may have thought it, because she could have got an illegal one, but she never would have said it. So what she’s essentially saying is, let’s make this illegal, and if I want to break the law then, I’ll be able to, because I would have the resources to swing that.
canuckistani
@aimai:
Aimai has it right; Sarah’s flirtation with abortion is going to be read by the fundies as evidence of her purity – a moral choice doesn’t count unless you make it in the face of temptation, and she passed with flying colours. For that matter, even failing a moral choice is all right if you are abject and publicly crawl for forgiveness from Jesus. Failing a moral choice and following it with a more difficult choice (fornication followed by teen marriage) is a workable solution for the fundies as well.
Morgoth
Well, Muggins here (somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan on many issues – albeit from a British perspective) fervently hopes that the small chink of light that has just appeared in Sarah Palin’s brain opens the door to her rejecting the rest of the woman-hating (i.e. the so-called "pro-life" movement) platform she previously campaigned upon and henceforth she stops being a traitor to her own sex and allows women to control their own bodies.
HyperIon
@Cat Lady: the article contains this very bad sentence:
why can’t PAID writers write grammatically correct sentences?
BC
I always thought that she had amniocentesis because she was contemplating abortion. Because if you are anti-abortion and firmly pro-life, I cannot understand why you would have this painful and expensive procedure. That she couldn’t go through with an abortion then is not the issue – she very definitely was exercising her right to seek one. Sort of like me deciding not to publish my political thoughts, then seeking to keep everyone else from publishing theirs!
LD50
I think some people here are interpreting this wrong. This is not exactly Sarah being hypocritical. Remember, Palin is an evangelical Christian. And there’s nothing more that crowd likes than the testimony of a person who once was really wicked and horrible but who Found Jesus, or, in this case, someone who was sorely tempted to do something evil, but who Found the Strength to Resist Evil Temptation Through Jesus. The more evil the past, or the temptation, the more the crowd likes it. No big deal if you exaggerate.
Oh yeah, and obviously there’s the fact that as a rising rightwing Christianist politician her career would be finished if she had an abortion and word got out. And also.
PS: Aimai nailed this before me.
Cat Lady
@HyperIon:
That article contains mostly all bad sentences, grammatical and substantive. It’s like a dispatch from Opposite World. As Legalize said above, so much fail. Wondering if she had a secret lobotomy, though, so much WIN. How would you know?
binzinerator
@Shinobi:
Control, especially control of women, and even more so, sexual control of women.
It’s the agenda of authoritarians, who also tend to belong to fundie religions.
As Gomer Pyle used to say, "Surprahze, surprahze, surprahze!"
YellowJournalism
To be fair, not all people who seek this procedure would or intend to have an abortion if there’s a complication. I never did it, but of the few I know who did, the majority of them were more concerned about being prepared to take care of the baby if there was something wrong rather than abort it if there was.
SLKRR
@BC:
It’s not strange at all that she had an amniocentesis. The process is recommended for pregnancies where the mother is over 35.
LD50
The question I wanted answered last fall is why the Palins give their kids names that one would normally bestow on German Shepherds. Some Alaska thing? Some postmodern redneck thing?
liberal
There is a name for women who are in a high-risk pregnancy and proceed to go on a many-hour trip after their water breaks. They are called assholes.
liberal
@Peter J:
That’s a good question.
asiangrrlMN
I follow the Mudflats blog (Alaskan blog), and this is just Sarah Palin weaving her narrative. She has been involved in so many shenanigans since her return to Alaska; this is merely one of them. She has her eyes set on national prominence, and she hasn’t figured out that her star is flaming out faster than you can say boo.
I do think she and the right in general are hypocritical when they try to dance around choosing to have a baby and denying other women the same right (the emphasis on Bristol choosing to have the baby, for example). Because, as we all know, if there is only one choice, then it’s not really a choice at all.
P.S. It’s interesting to me that the life of some cells is more important than the life of a fully-developed person.
mcc
It’s interesting that Palin’s speech comes closely after reports that she was no longer considered to be among the top tier of GOP stars.
Speaking of which, there’s a fun post at Political Animal where they suggest that Palin’s speech itself can potentially be viewed as contributing to that, what with the whole thing of skipping out on the last few days of a legislative session where her budget was being discussed to go give a speech in Indiana and this behavior allegedly not being very popular with the actual legislators.
Cris
Except that, in a country run by the Sarah Palins of the world, abortion would be an illegal act.
You and I may find the equation problematic, but Gov. Palin finds no such problem.
As I’m sure you know, Amanda Marcotte frequently addresses this very question. On the other hand, I was interested to see (via Jen R.’s blog) this survey suggesting that in the public at large, opposition to contraception isn’t a popular position even among Republicans. Except, you know, the ones making public policy.
gnomedad
Palin and her ilk want abortion to be illegal, but also want to tout their virtue in "choosing life."
@Punchy:
Pity the next Palin clan kid now that you’re given them this idea.
Betsy
The thing that bugs me even more than the hypocrisy of bragging about her choice is the statement that because she fleetingly considered having an abortion, she understands what it’s like to struggle with an unwanted pregnancy and whether to have an abortion. Lady, you have NO FUCKING IDEA what it’s like for most women in that situation. You have all the resources in the world to raise that child if you want, and you’d get patted on the back for doing so. Whereas for most women who have abortions, money is the main reason, and they’re often in situations in which carrying a pregnancy to term would seriously hurt them personally, financially, and/or professionally. Grumble. I’ve never been in that position, but I have friends who have, and the idea of Sarah Palin suggesting that she understands what they went through makes me want to hurt something. Or, what Liss said.
Also, @Zach: Actually about 40% of pregnancies in the US end in abortion, as of last year. http://www.guttmacher.org/media/presskits/2005/06/28/abortionoverview.html
Cris
@Betsy: If I read that Guttmacher page right, the number is 20%.
Betsy
@Cris: Oops! Sorry. I am an idiot.